Friday, June 28, 2013

Monarchy as a Transgender Experience

photo of RuPaul by David Shankbone

A young woman’s experience of monarchy (also known to some
as menarche) is one of the most important life development stages of his or her
life. He may have dreamt of being a queen, but this is a time when he or she
first realizes that he or she has royal blood. On the other hand many women who
are born females may have always dreamt of being kings. As Mel Brooks famously
quips in The History of the World: Part I, “it’s good to be the king.’"It’s
important to realize at this point that all good things come with at a price.
No pain no gain and the monthly cycle of monarchy with its cramps and mood
changes is a roller coaster ride for some. Who knows if the repression of the
Victorian age wasn’t the result of Queen Victoria having a rough time going
through monarchy? And there were others like Cleopatra whose erratic behavior
resulted in all kinds of turbulence. Remember Marlowe’s famous lines, “was this
the face that launched a thousand ships/and burned the topless towers of
Ilium?” For these reasons, it’s important that every gal have a good
understanding of what monarchy means. Think of the Hohenzollerns, the
Habsburgs, the Plantagenets, the Stuarts, the Tudors. When has monarchy occurred without bloodshed? A girl or guy can go through his or her
monarchy, but she or he won’t come out of it unstained.

2 comments:

I love this play on words. "When has monarchy occurred without bloodshed?"It has always seemed like cheating to me that transgenders get all the benefits of womanhood--not to mention all the best clothes--without the challenges of the monthly cycle that defines us biologically. I used to love going to the clubs near Weehawken, NJ to marvel at the cross-dressing lip-sync performers with the big hair, the beautiful gowns and perfect make-up. I'd go home afterward with an inner dialogue in full swing, a harrangue from my x-chromosome bitterly chastising me for my jeans and sandals and bad hair.

About Me

Francis Levy's debut novel, Erotomania: A Romance, was released in August 2008 by Two Dollar Radio.
His short stories, criticism, humor, and poetry have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Village Voice, The East Hampton Star, The Quarterly, Penthouse, Architectural Digest, TV Guide, The Journal of Irreproducible Results, and other publications. One of his Voice humor pieces was anthologized in The Big Book of New American Humor (HarperCollins). He is presently the Co-Director of The Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination (philoctetes.org), where he supervises roundtable discussions on topics as varied as “The Psychology of the Modern Nation State” and “Modern Traffic Theory, Behavior, and Imagination”.